Familyhttp://www.businessinsider.com/yourmoney/family
en-usTue, 03 Mar 2015 15:52:21 -0500Tue, 03 Mar 2015 15:52:21 -0500The latest news on Family from Business Insiderhttp://static3.businessinsider.com/assets/images/bilogo-250x36-wide-rev.pngBusiness Insiderhttp://www.businessinsider.com
http://www.businessinsider.com/how-this-single-income-family-paid-off-37000-of-debt-in-just-over-2-years-2015-2How this single-income family paid off $37,000 of debt in just over 2 yearshttp://www.businessinsider.com/how-this-single-income-family-paid-off-37000-of-debt-in-just-over-2-years-2015-2
Fri, 06 Feb 2015 13:00:00 -0500Alaina Tweddale
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/54d29ff8eab8ea312971b990-600-/family-on-beach.jpg" border="0" alt="Family on Beach" width="600"></p><p>When their second child was born, the Fobes family had almost no disposable income and were $37,000 in debt.</p>
<p>Tracie Fobes had recently lost her part-time, work-from-home income, and the couple was struggling to make ends meet on their one full-time salary.</p>
<p>The Fobes juggled their bills for four months post-baby before they realized something had to change.</p>
<p>"We were living paycheck to paycheck," says Tracie. "Money was tight and we were stressed. We were trying to figure out how to make ends meet but we were getting nowhere fast. It was really bad."</p>
<p>They weren't sure how they were going to manage long-term when a family friend told the Fobes about the Dave Ramsey method and get-out-of-debt due date they'd set for themselves. "They were doing it successfully on one income," says Tracie. "That's what got me thinking that maybe we could do it, too."</p>
<h3>Using a roadmap to chip away at their debt</h3>
<p>After that fateful dinner, the Fobes spent the following three days reading as many Dave Ramsey books as they could get their hands on. "We felt like we had an answer and a way we could actually do this," she says. "We felt like we finally found a solution to our problem."</p>
<p>The first step the Fobes took was to create an in-depth budget. "The first time we [wrote out our budget], we both wanted to throw up, it was so bad," laughed Tracie. "But we buckled down and realized we had no one to blame but ourselves. We changed our money attitude and moved forward."</p>
<p>The budget helped the Fobes realize where they were overspending and where they needed to cut back. Grocery costs were way too high, they realized, so Tracie set to work learning how to meal plan and use coupons to slash food costs. Tracie would plan her family's weekly meals around what was on sale that week at the supermarket and what coupons were in her Sunday newspaper supplement. She also became efficient about using what was already in her pantry. "It became a goal to pay as little out of pocket at the store as I could," she says. In one year alone, Tracie saved $6,000 just by menu planning and couponing.</p>
<p>Then, there were the restaurant meals. "We were also spending a lot to go out to eat," Tracie says, admitting to their three time a week habit. "If you eat out eight to 10 times per month and it costs $20 per adult, that's over $4,000," she explains. "When you sit down and do the math, you realize how sickening it is." So, they slashed their restaurant budget and reallocated those funds toward paying down their debt.</p>
<p>Like most Americans, the Fobes had plenty of stuff around the house that they didn't actually use. "We did an assessment of our wants versus needs," Tracie says. "We had all this furniture that we were storing for a home remodel that we knew wouldn't happen for at least 10 years. We realized that we wanted the furniture but what we&nbsp;<em>needed</em>&nbsp;was to get out of debt." Cleaning out the house raised $3,000, which went directly toward paying down their debt. "It was a nice way to clean out the house," Tracie says. "We got rid of a lot of junk. It was liberating. We didn't realize how much all that stuff was weighing us down."</p>
<p><img src="http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/54d2a2ddecad044f503d550f-975-731/family-walking-snow.jpg" border="0" alt="Family Walking Snow"></p>
<h3>Staying the course</h3>
<p>It can be hard to maintain frugality for as long as it takes to pay off a hefty debt burden. Tracie's healthy attitude helped her stay on target. "We didn't get into debt in two months," she says. "It takes a long time to pay it off. You have to be patient and stick to it. You have to not give up."</p>
<p>In addition to spending cuts, The Fobes also took any unaccounted for money and put it toward lowering their debts. There were income tax returns, but there was also a new income stream: Tracie had wanted to share her newfound saving strategies with others, so she started blogging about her journey at&nbsp;<a href="http://www.pennypinchinmom.com/">pennypinchinmom.com</a>. The blog was a hobby at first, but over time it grew into a substantial income source.</p>
<p>"My first monthly revenue check for the blog was for $65," she says. "We made $1,000 in the first year but it went up from there." In year two her blog earned $23,000 and then $38,000 in year three. "The extra income really helped. It felt like free money, so we just used it to pay down the debt," she says. "In the end, we paid off $37,000 in just 27 months."</p>
<h3>The final stretch</h3>
<p>In 18–24 months, the Fobes will pay off their last remaining debt — their mortgage. "Having financial freedom is like no other feeling in the world," Tracie says. "Our money is our money now. We decide how to spend it."</p>
<p>For others looking to start their own get-out-of-debt journey, Fobes suggests leveraging a personal passion to build a side income. "Photographers can take family photos, writers can freelance," she says. "Many people also do well with multi-level marketing companies because the work can be done in the evening, after traditional work hours." Blogging worked for Tracie, but there are many different paths to follow.</p>
<p>Now that the Fobes have a comfortable disposable income, they use it to spend time as family. "We do fun things on the weekends and we don't think much about the cost of event tickets," she says. They go on vacation with the kids. They work on home remodeling projects. "It's amazing," she says. "When people ask what's stressing me out, our budget and finances never come to the top of the list."</p><p><strong>SEE ALSO:&nbsp;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/how-one-woman-paid-off-34000-of-debt-and-launched-a-business-in-only-4-years-2015-1" >How One Woman Paid Off $34,000 Of Debt And Launched A Business In Only 4 Years</a></strong></p>
<p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/how-this-single-income-family-paid-off-37000-of-debt-in-just-over-2-years-2015-2#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> <p>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/flying-car-aeromobil-flies-430-miles-2014-12">This Flying Car Is Real And It Can Fly 430 Miles On A Full Tank</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/how-one-florida-family-opened-their-own-restaurant-with-35000-2015-1How One Florida Family Opened Their Own Restaurant With $35,000http://www.businessinsider.com/how-one-florida-family-opened-their-own-restaurant-with-35000-2015-1
Tue, 27 Jan 2015 16:53:19 -0500George Schofield
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/54c7e66569bedd405687fe20-572-429/goolsby-restaurant.jpg" border="0" alt="Goolsby Restaurant"></p><p>Pinki Goolsby was laid off in 2010 from her job as a purchasing agent, and worried that, at 63, her age would prevent her from&nbsp;<a href="http://blog.credit.com/2014/03/how-to-prepare-for-a-possible-layoff-78688/?utm_source=BI&amp;utm_medium=content&amp;utm_content=IB_1&amp;utm_campaign=family_restaurant_business" title="How to Prepare for a Possible Layoff">ever being employed again</a>.</p>
<p>Her son Shane Keinz, 41, a former business owner and talented chef, was newly relocated in Florida, and looking for work.</p>
<p>Her other son, Matt Holt, 35, is an MBA who was selling health insurance but wasn't thrilled with the corporate world; earlier in his career he had been the co-owner of a restaurant in West Palm Beach.</p>
<p>All three knew that Shane's culinary skills&nbsp;—&nbsp;and his conviction that stuffed burgers were the next big foodie thing&nbsp;—&nbsp;could somehow be the solution to their&nbsp;<a href="http://blog.credit.com/2014/12/think-you-might-lose-your-job-how-to-prepare-for-the-worst-104326/?utm_source=BI&amp;utm_medium=content&amp;utm_content=IB_2&amp;utm_campaign=family_restaurant_business" title="Think You Might Lose Your Job? How to Prepare for the Worst">collective employment issues</a>.</p>
<p>Together they launched Full Belly Stuffed Burgers in Bradenton, Florida, where their mission was to elevate the humble burger to a gourmet experience.</p>
<p>Americans will never stop eating burgers, but the market is saturated, the trio knew.</p>
<p>Their value proposition: "Put a new spin on a classic and make it better than anybody else. And make sure that something truly differentiates you — in our case, that every burger is hand-crafted every morning, and that the flavors are inspired," Shane explained.</p>
<p>Stuffings include sun-dried tomatoes, bacon, peppers, and various cheeses.&nbsp;Two of the more popular menu items are the Matty Melt, which is stuffed, however unlikely, with maple-cured bacon and peanut butter, and the Jalapeño Popper Burger.</p>
<h3>Getting started</h3>
<p>The trio started modestly, selling stuffed burgers at three farmers markets in Sarasota and Tampa —&nbsp;cooked on a grill at the market, and also available packaged for customers to grill at home.&nbsp;<span style="line-height: 1.5em;">They also catered special events. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">After three years, they had developed solid experience not just with sourcing but with direct interactions with customers. When people kept asking about a restaurant where they could get a stuffed burger whenever they wanted, the family knew it had a&nbsp;</span><a href="http://blog.credit.com/2014/08/the-best-time-to-start-a-small-business-92538/?utm_source=BI&amp;utm_medium=content&amp;utm_content=IB_3&amp;utm_campaign=family_restaurant_business" title="The Best Time to Start a Small Business">marketable idea</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">.</span></p>
<p>"I'm a firm believer in going where the market takes you," Matt said.</p>
<p>The venture was&nbsp;<a href="http://www.credit.com/personal-finance/retrain-your-brain-to-cut-debt-build-wealth/?utm_source=BI&amp;utm_medium=content&amp;utm_content=IB_4&amp;utm_campaign=family_restaurant_business" title="Retrain Your Brain to Cut Debt and Build Wealth">completely self-financed</a>. The three owners&nbsp;<a href="http://www.credit.com/personal-finance/retirement-planning-lingo-terms-to-know/?utm_source=BI&amp;utm_medium=content&amp;utm_content=IB_5&amp;utm_campaign=family_restaurant_business" title="Retirement Planning Lingo - 401k's, Pensions, &amp; Other Terms To Know">cashed in 401(k)s</a>, earmarked a small inheritance from Pinki's mother, and&nbsp;<a href="http://www.credit.com/personal-finance/painless-penny-pinching-how-to-save-big-without-feeling-deprived/?utm_source=BI&amp;utm_medium=content&amp;utm_content=IB_6&amp;utm_campaign=family_restaurant_business" title="Painless Penny Pinching: How to Save Big Without Feeling Deprived">pooled their savings</a>&nbsp;("every dime," Matt said) to scrape together the $35,000 they needed to launch the restaurant.</p>
<p>In the two years they've been open, they've spent little on marketing and advertising, relying mostly on a devoted customer base and word of mouth to keep the restaurant full. They're also beginning to partner with other like-minded small businesses in the area.</p>
<p>In July, Full Belly teamed up with a craft brewery, Big Top Brewing Company, for a prix-fixe beer pairing dinner, and later in the year did a "tap-takeover" with the Darwin Brewing company, featuring four of its craft beers at the restaurant.</p>
<h3>Seeing results</h3>
<p>Full Belly has been a solid performer since it opened, with 4.5 stars on both Yelp and Trip Advisor. The family is considering a move to a bigger, better location when the current lease, in a strip mall that lost its anchor right before the restaurant's grand opening, is up in three years. Another future plan is to grow through franchising, according to Matt, which would bring in more revenue more quickly than growing organically.</p>
<p><img src="http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/54c7e79c6bb3f7132a16e936-1200-900/restaurant-kitchen.jpg" border="0" alt="Restaurant Kitchen"></p>
<h3>Business realities</h3>
<p>In the restaurant business, margins are tight, hours are long, and customers are fickle. You have to be satisfied with slow growth. This isn't the kind of business that will get you rich overnight, Matt said.</p>
<p>Working with family is a bit of a "faith walk," he added. Personalities can and do conflict. But at Full Belly, there's a clear division of labor and little overlapping of functions, which helps avoid friction.</p>
<p>Shane is the creative force, both with décor and menu; Matt the business expert; Pinki the operations head. (Or, as the sons put it, Shane's the talent, Matt's the brains, and Pinki's the muscle.) All will give feedback and support to the other, but otherwise each person runs his or her own wheelhouse.</p>
<h3>Lessons learned</h3>
<p><strong>From Shane:&nbsp;</strong>Involve your customers. "We're always trying out new recipes, and we test them with a few trusted people before we put anything new on the menu," Shane said. But it's not just about new flavors and combinations, he pointed out. "We also have to consider the cost of the raw ingredients and how well any stuffing works in production. Pinki is already making 1,000 burgers a week by hand, so I don't want anything that's too complicated or time consuming for her." The owners also engage their customers with a monthly specialty burger selected from customer recommendations. That keeps people thinking about stuffed burgers, and the novelty is something that really appeals to regulars hungry (literally) for different burger choices.</p>
<p><strong>From Matt:</strong>&nbsp;Understand what you don't know as much as what you do know. In other words, when you do your research, keep asking about what you need to consider that you haven't yet addressed. You don't want to get blindsided because you weren't completely informed, or were naïve about something.</p>
<p><strong>From Pinki:</strong>&nbsp;If you want to be an entrepreneur, know that what you're getting yourself into is not just a puddle of water, it's a swimming pool&nbsp;— and you are going to have to swim around and know where the sides are. Also, if you're going to put in 12-hour days, you'd better be passionate about what you do and who you work with.</p>
<h3>More from Credit.com</h3>
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<li><a href="http://www.credit.com/credit-scores/what-is-a-good-credit-score/?utm_source=BI&amp;utm_medium=content&amp;utm_content=BO_1&amp;utm_campaign=family_restaurant_business">What’s a Good Credit Score?</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.credit.com/credit-scores/what-is-a-bad-credit-score/?utm_source=BI&amp;utm_medium=content&amp;utm_content=BO_2&amp;utm_campaign=family_restaurant_business">What’s a Bad Credit Score?</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.credit.com/credit-reports/how-credit-impacts-your-day-to-day-life/?utm_source=BI&amp;utm_medium=content&amp;utm_content=BO_3&amp;utm_campaign=family_restaurant_business">How Credit Impacts Your Day-to-Day Life</a></li>
</ul><p><strong>SEE ALSO:&nbsp;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/family-refinanced-to-help-son-with-debt-2015-1" >How This Family Got Creative To Eliminate $200,000 In Law School Debt</a></strong></p>
<p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/how-one-florida-family-opened-their-own-restaurant-with-35000-2015-1#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/how-the-recession-has-changed-the-american-family-2014-12Here's How The Recession Has Changed The American Familyhttp://www.businessinsider.com/how-the-recession-has-changed-the-american-family-2014-12
Wed, 17 Dec 2014 16:53:30 -0500Philip Cohen
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/5085a0a06bb3f7d95b000005-685-1024/family-18.jpg" border="0" alt="family portrait kids dusk"></p><p>Observers may be quick to declare social trends "good" or "bad" for families, but such conclusions are rarely justified. What's good for one family – or group of families – may be bad for another. And within families, interests do not always align.</p>
<p>Divorce is "bad" for a family in the sense of breaking it apart, but it may be beneficial, or even essential, for one or both partners or their children.</p>
<p>This kind of ambiguity makes it difficult to assess what kind of impact the recent recession and its aftermath had on families. But for researchers, at least, it offers a lot of job security – so many questions, so much going on. In any case, here's where we stand so far.</p>
<p>The effect of the Great Recession on family trends in the United States has been dramatic with regard to birth rates and divorce, and has been strongly suggestive of family violence, but less clear for marriage and cohabitation.</p>
<p>Marriage rates declined, and cohabitation rates increased, but these trends were already underway, and the recession didn't alter them much. When trends don't change direction it's difficult to identify an effect of a shock this broad. However, with both birth rates and divorce, clear patterns emerged.</p>
<h2>Birth rates: a sharp drop</h2>
<p>The most dramatic impact was on birth rates, which dropped precipitously, especially for young women, as a result of the economic crisis. How do we know? First, the timing of the fertility decline is <a href="https://familyinequality.wordpress.com/2011/08/19/is-fertility-ready-to-rebound/">very suggestive</a>. After increasing steadily from the beginning of 2002 until late 2007, birth rates dropped sharply. (The decline has since slowed for some groups after 2010, but the US still saw record-low birth rates for teenagers and women ages 20-24 <a href="http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr63/nvsr63_02.pdf">as late as 2012</a>.)</p>
<p>Second, the <a href="http://ann.sagepub.com/content/650/1/214">decline in fertility was steeper</a> in states with greater increases in unemployment. Although we don't have the data to determine which couple did or did not have a child in response to economic changes, this pattern supports the idea that financial concerns convinced some people to not have a child.</p>
<p>That interpretation is supported by the third trend: the fertility drop was more pronounced <a href="http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db60.pdf">among younger women</a> – and there was no drop at all among women over 40. That may mean the fertility decline represents births postponed by families that intend to have children later – an option older women may not have – which fits previous research on economic shocks.</p>
<p>It seems likely that people who are on the fence about having a baby can be swayed by perceived financial hardship or uncertainty. From <a href="http://www.demographic-research.org/volumes/vol31/23/31-23.pdf">research on 27 European countries</a>, we know that people with troubled family financial situations are more likely to say they are unsure whether they will meet their stated childbearing goals – that is, economic uncertainty doesn't change their familial aims but may increase uncertainty in whether they will be met.</p>
<p>However, some births delayed inevitably become births foregone. Based on the effect of unemployment on birth rates in earlier periods, it appears a substantial number of young women who postponed births will end up never having children. By <a href="http://www.pnas.org/content/111/41/14734">one estimate</a>, women who were in their early 20s during the Great Recession are projected to have some 400,000 fewer lifetime births and an additional 1.5% of them will never have a birth.</p>
<h2>Divorce rates: a counter-intuitive reaction</h2>
<p>In the case of divorce, the pattern is counter-intuitive. Although economic hardship and insecurity adds stress to relationships and increases the risk of divorce, the overall <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0049089X10002917">divorce rate usually drops</a> when unemployment rates rise.</p>
<p>Researchers believe that, like births, people postpone divorces during economic crises because of the costs of divorcing – not just legal fees, but also housing transitions (which were especially difficult in the Great Recession) and employment disruptions.</p>
<p>My <a href="http://www.terpconnect.umd.edu/~pnc/PRPR14.pdf">own research</a> found that there was a sharp drop in the divorce rate in 2009 that can reasonably be attributed to the recession. But, as we suspect will be the case with births, there appears to have been a divorce-rate rebound in the years that followed.</p>
<h2>Domestic violence: a spike along with joblessness</h2>
<p>Family violence has become much less common since the 1990s. The reasons are not entirely clear, but they certainly include the overall drop in violent crime, improved response from social service and non-governmental organizations, and improvements in women's relative economic status. However, when the recession hit there was a spike in intimate-partner violence, coinciding with the sharp rise in men's unemployment rates (I show the trends <a href="https://familyinequality.wordpress.com/2013/11/07/maybe-the-recession-increased-violence-after-all/">here</a>).</p>
<p><img src="http://static6.businessinsider.com/image/5491f236eab8ea947e94f59c-1091-1283/cohen_1.jpg" border="0" alt="Cohen_1"></p>
<p>As with the other trends, it's hard to make a case based on timing alone, but the evidence is fairly strong that the economic shock increased family stress and violence. For example, one study showed that mothers were more likely to report <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0145213413002226">spanking their children</a> in the months when consumer confidence fell. Another study found a <a href="http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/early/2011/09/15/peds.2010-2185.abstract">jump in abusive head trauma</a> cases during the recession in several regions. And there have been many anecdotal and journalist accounts of increases in family violence, emerging as <a href="https://familyinequality.wordpress.com/2009/12/30/recession-begets-family-violence/">early as 2009</a>. Are these direct results of the economic stress or mere correlation? It's hard to say for sure.</p>
<p>The ultimate impact of these trends on American families will likely take years to emerge. The recession may have affected the pattern of marriage in ways we don't yet understand – how couples selected each other, who got married and who didn't – and may create measurable group of marriages that are marked for future effects as yet unforeseen. Like the young adults who entered the labor market during the period of high unemployment and whose career trajectories will be forever altered unfavorably, how these families bear the scars cannot be predicted. Time will tell.</p>
<p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.edu.au/content/34272/count.gif" border="0" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1"></p>
<p>This article was originally published on <a href="http://theconversation.com">The Conversation</a>. Read the <a href="http://theconversation.com/fewer-births-and-divorces-more-violence-how-the-recession-affected-the-american-family-34272">original article</a>.</p><p><strong>SEE ALSO:&nbsp;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/myth-of-normal-american-family-2014-9" >There's No Such Thing As A Normal American Family </a></strong></p>
<p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/how-the-recession-has-changed-the-american-family-2014-12#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/mark-cuban-parenting-having-kids-2014-12MARK CUBAN: Here's My Biggest Goal For My Kidshttp://www.businessinsider.com/mark-cuban-parenting-having-kids-2014-12
Tue, 16 Dec 2014 10:45:00 -0500Devan Joseph and Kamelia Angelova
<p><span>Mark Cuban spoke with Henry Blodget at Business Insider's</span><em>&nbsp;</em><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/event/ignition-2014">IGNITION 2014</a><span>. He told us how having a family has changed his outlook on life.</span><span><br></span></p>
<p><em>Edited by&nbsp;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/author/devan-joseph" title="Devan Joseph">Devan Joseph</a>.&nbsp;Special thanks to Justin Gmoser and Sam Rega.</em></p>
<p><strong>Follow BI Video:</strong>&nbsp;<a href="https://www.facebook.com/BusinessInsider.Video">On Facebook</a></p><p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/mark-cuban-parenting-having-kids-2014-12#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/meet-the-family-who-lives-on-the-road--and-captures-all-of-their-travels-on-instagram-2014-12Meet The Family Who Instagrams Their Life On The Roadhttp://www.businessinsider.com/meet-the-family-who-lives-on-the-road--and-captures-all-of-their-travels-on-instagram-2014-12
Fri, 12 Dec 2014 09:06:00 -0500Caroline Moss
<p><span><img style="float:right;" src="http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/548a1f4e6da8112064c7a9af-752-751/screen shot 2014-12-11 at 5.35.12 pm.png" border="0" alt="Screen Shot 2014 12 11 at 5.35.12 PM">Meet the Works family. </span></p>
<p><span>In 2011, Josh, Jessa, and their son Jack left everything they knew behind and chose to purchase an Airstream bus to travel the country. </span></p>
<p><span>They saw it all from the comfort of their tiny, mobile home. From the mountains of Colorado to the beaches of Southern California, it seemed that the Works family had managed to experience everything the USA had to offer. </span></p>
<p>And they captured it all on <a href="http://instagram.com/worksology/">their incredible Instagram feed.</a></p>
<p>Now, nearly four years later, they're starting a new chapter in a Kansas farmhouse. Goodbye, Airstream! <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/family-sold-everything-to-travel-2014-5">We've covered the Works clan in the past</a>, now let's take a look at some of the best photos from their travels.&nbsp;</p><h3>Say hi to Jessa and Jack Works! Dad Josh is behind the camera.</h3>
<img src="http://static3.businessinsider.com/image/548a1f526da8115d64c7a9ac-400-300/say-hi-to-jessa-and-jack-works-dad-josh-is-behind-the-camera.jpg" alt="" />
<br/><br/><h3>In 2011, the newlyweds got a little restless.</h3>
<img src="http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/548a1f536da8112360c7a9ad-400-300/in-2011-the-newlyweds-got-a-little-restless.jpg" alt="" />
<br/><br/><h3>They wanted to do something different and change up their routine. They also wanted to see the country with their son in tow.</h3>
<img src="http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/548a1f4f69beddce4a2dfda1-400-300/they-wanted-to-do-something-different-and-change-up-their-routine-they-also-wanted-to-see-the-country-with-their-son-in-tow.jpg" alt="" />
<br/><br/><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/meet-the-family-who-lives-on-the-road--and-captures-all-of-their-travels-on-instagram-2014-12#so-thats-what-they-did-the-couple-purchased-a-27-foot-airstream-bus-and-hit-the-road-4">See the rest of the story at Business Insider</a> http://www.businessinsider.com/heres-why-first-children-are-smarter-2014-12Why First-Born Children Are Smarterhttp://www.businessinsider.com/heres-why-first-children-are-smarter-2014-12
Sat, 06 Dec 2014 19:18:00 -0500Derek Thompson
<p><span><img src="http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/54839c1decad04f76965f5da-840-442/siblings-4.jpg" border="0" alt="tanner girls ">"Those born earlier perform better in school"—and according to a&nbsp;</span><a href="http://papers.nber.org/tmp/37272-w19542.pdf">new study</a><span>, it's because of the parents.</span></p>
<p>Moms and dads simply go easy on their later-born kids, according to data analyzed by economists V. Joseph Hotz and Juan Pantano, and as a result, first-born children tend to receive both&nbsp;the best parenting&nbsp;and the best grades.</p>
<p>The first thing to say about a study like this is that lots of readers will reflexively disagree with the assumption. With kids, as with anything, shouldn't practice make perfect? Don't parents get richer into their 30s and 40s, providing for better child-rearing resources?&nbsp;I'm a first child, myself, well-known within the family for being unorganized, forgetful, periodically disheveled, and persistently caught&nbsp;day-dreaming in the middle of conversations.</p>
<p>For this reason, I've put stock in what you might call the First Pancake Theory of Parenting. In short:&nbsp;First pancakes&nbsp;<a href="http://www.chow.com/food-news/54864/why-does-the-first-pancake-always-turn-out-the-worst/">tend to come out a little funny</a>, and, well, so did I. And so do many first-borns.&nbsp;</p>
<p>But international surveys of birth orders and behavior (which might have offered me an&nbsp;empirical excuse to behave this way)&nbsp;aren't doing me&nbsp;any favors. First borns around the world, it turns out, have higher IQs, perform better in school, and are considered more accomplished by their parents. Looking at parent evaluations of children from the&nbsp;National Longitudinal Survey of Youth&nbsp;in 1979, the researchers found that mothers are much more likely to see their first children as&nbsp;high-achievers. They regard their subsequent children as considerably more average in their class (see table and chart below).&nbsp;</p>
<p><img src="http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/54839a416da811fc3998cd53-840-955/atlantic graph.png" border="0" alt="atlantic graph"></p>
<p>Let's briefly count&nbsp;off and nickname some of the leading&nbsp;older-kids-are-smarter&nbsp;theories reviewed by the economists,&nbsp;which push back against the principle of&nbsp;first pancakes.</p>
<p><strong>1) The Divided-Attention Theory</strong>:&nbsp;Earlier-born siblings enjoy more time, care and attention&nbsp;than&nbsp;later-born siblings because attention is divided between fewer kids.</p>
<p><strong>2) The Bad-Genes&nbsp;Theory:</strong>&nbsp;The strong evidence of higher IQs among first children leads&nbsp;some to believe that&nbsp;later kids are receiving diminished "genetic endowment."</p>
<p><strong>3) The I've-Had-It-With-Kids! Theory</strong>:&nbsp;Some parents&nbsp;decide to stop having more children after a difficult&nbsp;experience raising one. In that case,&nbsp;the poorer performance of later children isn't genetic, so much as&nbsp;selection bias: Some parents keep having children until they have one that's so problematic it makes them say "enough."&nbsp;</p>
<p><strong>4) The No-One-to-Teach Theory</strong>: This is the idea that older siblings benefit from the ability to&nbsp;teach their&nbsp;younger&nbsp;brothers and sisters. Building these teaching skills helps them build learning skills that makes them better in school.</p>
<p><strong>5) The Divorce Theory:&nbsp;</strong>Family crises like divorce are far more likely to happen after the first child in born (first marriage, then divorce, then a first child is not a common sequence) and they can disrupt later kids' upbringing.</p>
<p><strong>6) The Lazy-Parent Theory</strong>: The general idea here is that first-time parents, scared of messing up their new human,&nbsp;commit to memory the first chapter of&nbsp;<em>Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother</em>&nbsp;but by the&nbsp;second or third child, they've majorly chilled out.</p>
<p>Hotz and Pantano settle close to Theory (6). Parents are more likely to make strict rules (about, e.g., TV-watching) and be&nbsp;intimately involved in the academic performance of their first children, according to survey data. They're also more likely to punish their first child's bad grades. Hotz and Pantano say moms and dads&nbsp;start tough and go soft&nbsp;to establish a "reputation" within their household for being strict—a reputation&nbsp;they hope will trickle down to the younger siblings who will be too respectful to misbehave later on.</p>
<p>The theory is interesting but not entirely persuasive. First it&nbsp;seems nearly-impossible to test. The&nbsp;survey&nbsp;data is much better at showing that parents chill out as they have more kids&nbsp;than at showing that parents chill out *because* they're explicitly establishing a reputation for strictness. Nothing in the paper seems to argue against the simpler idea that&nbsp;parents seem to go soft on later kids because raising four children with the same level of attention you'd afford a single child is utterly exhausting.&nbsp;What's more, if later-born children turn out to be less academically capable than their older simblings, it suggests that the economists'&nbsp;reputation theory is failing in families across the country.</p><p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/heres-why-first-children-are-smarter-2014-12#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/how-sibling-relationships-affect-your-life-2014-12Here's How Your Sibling Relationships Affect Your Life As An Adult — For Good And Badhttp://www.businessinsider.com/how-sibling-relationships-affect-your-life-2014-12
Fri, 05 Dec 2014 17:33:17 -0500Drake Baer
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/548220b2ecad04dd648b4571-600-/mary-kate-and-ashley-olsen-3.jpg" border="0" alt="Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen" width="600" style="float: right;"></p><p>Patricia East started her career as a developmental psychologist at a women's clinic in California.&nbsp;</p>
<p>She saw lots of pregnant teens.&nbsp;</p>
<p><a href="http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2013/04/29/179266284/Big-Siblings-Big-Influence-Some-Behaviors-Run-In-The-Family" target="_blank">She tells NPR</a>&nbsp;that&nbsp;a pattern started to emerge.&nbsp;</p>
<p>"The nurses and the doctors there would bring a teen back for her prenatal visit and they would say, 'Hey! Aren't you Maria's younger sister?'" <a href="http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2013/04/29/179266284/Big-Siblings-Big-Influence-Some-Behaviors-Run-In-The-Family" target="_blank">she recalls</a>.</p>
<p>"And the young woman would say, 'Yeah, I am!' And they would say to another patient, 'You know, haven't I seen you before?' And she would say, 'Yes, I was here for my older sister when she was pregnant.'"</p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">As a good scientist does, East decided to verify her observation, and she followed </span><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"></span><a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1363/4121009/abstract" target="_blank">pairs of sisters in a study</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">.&nbsp;</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The results were astounding:</span><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">&nbsp;A woman whose older sister got pregnant was&nbsp;</span><strong><em>five times more likely</em></strong><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><strong><em>&nbsp;to get pregnant</em></strong> than one who didn't.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">And just as your parents told you, siblings can provide positive role models as well. Other research has found that <a href="http://lib.dr.iastate.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3120&amp;context=etd" target="_blank">support from older siblings can drive academic achievement</a>. Academics call it "<a href="http://newsroom.iza.org/en/2014/11/28/learning-from-the-older-brother-sibling-spillover-effects-in-school-achievement/" target="_blank">the&nbsp;sibling spillover effect</a>," and there are at least three possible drivers — the older sibling helps with homework, the younger sibling imitates their work style, or the older sibling tips the young one to which classes and teachers to take.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">This is all part of a <span>growing</span>&nbsp;body of knowledge around how our sibling relationships affect not only how we behaved as kids, but how we act as adults.&nbsp;</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">It's a new science.&nbsp;</span><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">While psychologists have been investigating </span><a href="http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&amp;lr=&amp;id=6TuYAgAAQBAJ&amp;oi=fnd&amp;pg=PP1&amp;dq=sibling+relationships&amp;ots=LahQLhXqUF&amp;sig=5yahY2OxFtFf4l5mVFMS9HF2tGs#v=onepage&amp;q=older%20sibling%20gains%20in%20social%20skills&amp;f=false" target="_blank">how family relationships affect our identities</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> since the 19th century</span><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">,</span><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> it's mostly been focused on the mother-father-child triad, rather than relationships we have with siblings.&nbsp;</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">But if you think of a family as a tiny society, it makes sense that <span>we would first learn to socialize through relationships with </span>sisters and brothers.&nbsp;</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">In the formative 1995 book "<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Sibling-Relationships-Across-Life-Span/dp/0306450259/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1417812084&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=Sibling+Relationships+Across+the+Life+Span%2C" target="_blank">Sibling Relationships Across The Life Span</a>," psychologist Victor Cicirelli says that&nbsp;</span><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">"the older sibling gains in social skills in interacting with the younger" and "the younger sibling gains cognitively by imitating the older." In this way, siblings are "agents of socialization." In other words, they provide the foundation of how we learn to deal with people.&nbsp;</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">As we've discussed <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/firstborn-daughters-are-the-most-ambitious-children-2014-6">before</a>, siblings are constantly competing for their parents' attention, and that tendency toward competition is handed down through evolution. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The logic goes that the more a child of any species receives the energy of their parents, the more likely the child is to survive — thus the reason first children tend to be achievers, while second or third children jump at separate activities like athletics, music, or arts. Just like Darwin's finches, <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/firstborn-daughters-are-the-most-ambitious-children-2014-6">each sibling is trying to find his or her niche</a>.&nbsp;</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">But as NPR reporter Alix Spiegel argues, it's good for them.&nbsp;</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">"[Siblings] learn from the friction between them ... as they fight for their parents' attention," she <a href="http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2013/04/29/179266284/Big-Siblings-Big-Influence-Some-Behaviors-Run-In-The-Family" target="_blank">writes</a>. "Mild conflict between brothers and sisters teaches them how to interact with peers, coworkers, and friends for the rest of their lives."</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><img src="http://static5.businessinsider.com/image/548222e36da811837a8b456a-1200-600/queen-elizabeth-camila-charles-andrew-harry-buckingham-palace-1.jpg" border="0" alt="Queen Elizabeth Camila Charles Andrew Harry Buckingham Palace">If siblings manage to get into adulthood without <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/famous-sibling-rivalries-2014-6?op=1">overwhelming resentment</a>, then they tend to become BFFs. <a href="http://sf.oxfordjournals.org/content/71/1/85.short" target="_blank">A survey of&nbsp;7,730 Americans</a>&nbsp;found that&nbsp;30% of respondents would call a sibling in an emergency, and over 60% said their brother or sister was one of their best friends.&nbsp;</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">It lasts late into life: <a href="http://psycnet.apa.org/index.cfm?fa=search.displayrecord&amp;uid=1999-11443-004" target="_blank">A Swedish study of people over 80 years old </a>found that having closeness with friends or even children did little to increase total life satisfaction — but feeling close contact with a sibling did.&nbsp;</span></p><p><strong>SEE ALSO:&nbsp;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/firstborn-daughters-are-the-most-ambitious-children-2014-6" >Firstborn Daughters Are The Most Ambitious Children, Research Finds</a></strong></p>
<p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/how-sibling-relationships-affect-your-life-2014-12#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/simple-ways-to-change-your-life-2014-1230 Simple Ways To Change Your Life For The Betterhttp://www.businessinsider.com/simple-ways-to-change-your-life-2014-12
Fri, 05 Dec 2014 16:43:41 -0500Emily Co
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static3.businessinsider.com/image/54820bc46da811ac0e390b24-600-/man-leaping-sunset-4.jpg" border="0" alt="man leaping sunset" width="600"></p><p>The beginning of a new year always teases people with the promise of a fresh start and makes people believe they can get rid of old habits for good and make big life changes.</p>
<p>While you're feeling motivated, check out these moves that will definitely make a huge impact on your life:</p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em; color: #000000;">1. Practice meditation.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em; color: #000000;">2. Spend more time with loved ones.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em; color: #000000;">3. Get enough and better sleep.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em; color: #000000;">4. Read more.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em; color: #000000;">5. Travel more.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em; color: #000000;">6. Take personal days.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em; color: #000000;">7. Stay clutter-free.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em; color: #000000;">8. Simplify your life by getting rid of items.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em; color: #000000;">9. Go outside your comfort zone and try new things.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em; color: #000000;">10. Pick up a hobby.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em; color: #000000;">11. Take a class.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em; color: #000000;">12. Exercise.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em; color: #000000;">13. Take the time to talk to your parents.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em; color: #000000;">14. Take regular nature breaks.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em; color: #000000;">15. Visit a national park.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em; color: #000000;">16. Stay positive.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em; color: #000000;">17. Save more.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em; color: #000000;">18. Perform random acts of kindness for people.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em; color: #000000;">19. Start a gratitude journal.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em; color: #000000;">20. Volunteer.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em; color: #000000;">21. Don't bring work home with you.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em; color: #000000;">22. Give people the benefit of the doubt.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em; color: #000000;">23. Eat healthy and well.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em; color: #000000;">24. Recycle.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em; color: #000000;">25. Be honest with yourself and other people.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em; color: #000000;">26. Speak up.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em; color: #000000;">27. Find a mentor.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em; color: #000000;">28. Let go of the past.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em; color: #000000;">29. Join a community or organization.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em; color: #000000;">30. Get rid of harmful chemicals at home.</span></p><p><strong>SEE ALSO:&nbsp;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/10-ways-to-make-your-life-better-today-2014-1" >10 Tricks To Make Your Life Better Today</a></strong></p>
<p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/simple-ways-to-change-your-life-2014-12#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/an-artist-photoshopped-herself-into-her-moms-old-pictures-2014-12An Artist Photoshopped Herself Into Her Mom's Old Pictures To See What They Would Look Like As Childhood Friendshttp://www.businessinsider.com/an-artist-photoshopped-herself-into-her-moms-old-pictures-2014-12
Mon, 01 Dec 2014 17:18:00 -0500Christian Storm
<p><img src="http://static6.businessinsider.com/image/547cc699ecad048f77b2c11d-1000-1000/janiscoloring_rx_web_o.jpg" border="0" alt="danielle delph"></p><p>Do you ever wonder what your parents were like as children? If you could somehow go back in time and be the same age as them, would you be friends?&nbsp;</p>
<p>One artist is using the magic of Photoshop to delve deeper into that very idea.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.danielleandjanis.com/">Danielle Delph</a>, an Oregon-based artist and art director, began placing herself in her mother's vintage photographs as a surprise for her mother, Janis, and the project took off from there. We caught up with Danielle to discuss the photos, her process, and the state of memories in an internet world.</p>
<p><strong>Business Insider</strong>: <strong>Hey Danielle!&nbsp;How did this project begin? What was your inspiration?</strong></p>
<p><strong>Danielle Delph</strong>:&nbsp;I think everyone asks themselves at some point, "Would I have been friends with my parents if I had grown up with them?"&nbsp;I wondered while I was looking at old photos one day. What would it look like if I placed my childhood self next to my mother? Would we have looked like friends? Would I be able to capture the same moments and interactions that real friends share?<img src="http://static3.businessinsider.com/image/547cc699eab8ea763bcdea93-1000-1000/janisballet_rx_web_o.jpg" border="0" alt="danielle delph"><strong>BI: What's the process like to create these images? How long do you usually take per photograph?</strong></p>
<p><strong style="line-height: 1.5em;">DD</strong><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">: The process took about 6 months total. I had to have my mom and family friends mail me both her and my old childhood photos, which proved more tricky than expected. We had lost a majority of childhood photos when Hurricane Ivan hit our home in Pensacola, Florida, so there were far less photos to work with than I would have hoped. The&nbsp;majority of that time was spent digging through our photos and trying to match ages and moments. From a technical perspective, there was a lot of scanning and photoshopping, but no specific time frame for each individual photo. Some were much easier than others. It was more about finding the right photos.</span></p>
<div><img src="http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/547cc6996bb3f7a328b7ee2b-1000-1000/janiswalking_rx_web_o.jpg" border="0" alt="danielle delph"><strong>BI: What was your mother's reaction?</strong></div>
<p><strong>DD</strong>: She loved it. She found it really touching. It made her cry when she first saw it and she says she goes to the site every day, which she now calls "our site." She made a comment about it feeling very "deja vu," almost like these moments had actually happened. She thinks that we truly could have been friends.<img src="http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/547cc6996bb3f70d26b7ee2d-1000-706/janiscouch_rx_web_o.jpg" border="0" alt="danielle delph"><strong>BI: Any more good photos in the works?</strong></p>
<p><strong>DD</strong>: It wasn't originally an ongoing project but I do have some ideas on how to continue the series. It's all about getting the right imagery, so if I'm lucky I might be able to pull it off again. We'll see.</p>
<p><img src="http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/547cc699ecad04c67bb2c11c-1000-1000/janisride_rx_web_o.jpg" border="0" alt="danielle delph"><strong>BI</strong>: <strong>What do you hope viewers will take away from the series?</strong></p>
<p><strong style="line-height: 1.5em;">DD</strong><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">:&nbsp;I hope they take away that our parents are more similar to us than we think. They were kids and teenagers at one point, going through the same things we went though. We just never saw that part of their lives. We live in a time where we constantly look toward the future; this project made me realize that it's important to take a step back and look at your past sometimes.</span></p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p><img src="http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/547cc6996da811480e14ab26-1000-1000/janisdance_rx_web_o.jpg" border="0" alt="danielle delph"><strong>BI</strong>: <strong>What are your thoughts on digital photos versus physical photos when it comes to collecting and saving memories? Do you ever get worried that future generations won't have access to the same hard copy history that we have of our parents, now that most of our personal photos only live online or on a computer?</strong></p>
<p><strong>DD<span style="line-height: 1.5em;">: </span></strong><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">This is a really great question, and I have sort of a two-part answer.</span></p>
<p>During this project, I felt like it was less about film versus digital as a medium and more about how digital has changed the way we take photos now. As I was digging through my mother's photos, I realized how differently her generation took photos compared to mine. They captured&nbsp;very specific moments— a recital, Christmas Eve, a vacation to New Orleans, moments that are meant to be put in a photo album that you would sit around and look at. At first, I found that it was hard for me to find photos of myself that connected with her photos because we're a culture that takes a picture of a chicken sandwich, and attaches hashtags to it (I am also guilty of this).</p>
<p>When I talked to my mom about the differences, she explained, "Film was expensive; people were precious about what they took because you had to take time and money to develop it." For us now, we have the ability to be way less curated about the photos we take because we deal with gigabytes and storage space, allowing us to take thousands of photos. Right now, I have photos on my phone from 2012 and 2013, and I've never printed even one. It makes me worry that the idea of the "family photo album" might be getting lost. When do we sit around and look back on moments together? Will Facebook albums replace the traditional family photo album?</p><p><strong>SEE ALSO:&nbsp;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/vintage-photos-of-american-tourists-in-the-1980s-2014-10" >25 Vintage Photos From Iconic American Tourist Spots Show How Odd Sightseers Can Be</a></strong></p>
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<p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/an-artist-photoshopped-herself-into-her-moms-old-pictures-2014-12#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/helpful-life-tips-from-grandma-2014-1120 Tips From Grandma That Will Make You More Successfulhttp://www.businessinsider.com/helpful-life-tips-from-grandma-2014-11
Tue, 25 Nov 2014 10:07:00 -0500Carina Sitkus
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/5473ad6769bedd9e136c0475-600-/grandma-5.jpg" border="0" alt="grandma" width="600"></p><p>Grandma is wise, and sometimes you just need to listen to her advice to feel a little bit better about yourself and your life.</p>
<p>For today, I will be your grandma since your real one likely isn't blogging.</p>
<h3>Grandma says:</h3>
<p><strong>1. Always keep a carton of orange juice in the fridge.</strong> Nothing is better for quenching your thirst or fending off a tickle in your throat before it becomes a full-blown cold.</p>
<p><strong>2. Rest.</strong> It can wait, whatever “it” is.</p>
<p><strong>3. Don’t hit the snooze button.</strong> You will feel sh---- all day. Just wake up. <em class="markup--em markup--li-em">Yes, grandmas say “sh-----.”</em></p>
<p><strong>4. Get rid of things you don’t use.</strong> When your space is clean, your mind is clear.</p>
<p><strong>5. Work out.</strong> Or at least take a walk everyday if you can. There is nothing better for your mental health.</p>
<p><strong>6. Don’t stop when you have momentum. </strong>Ernest Hemingway famously stopped writing as soon as he knew what would happen next in his stories. Don’t do that. You’re not Ernest Hemingway. Get done what you can now. Take advantage of the movement. Tomorrow you may just want to sit in bed, eat Doritos, or make a cat video.</p>
<p><strong>7. There is no secret to success. </strong>Wake up earlier than everyone else. Go to bed later. Work, work, work. That’s what it takes, and there is no shortcut.</p>
<p><strong>8. Embrace criticism.</strong> It makes you better in the end. But don’t let it damage your psyche or your confidence. Someone tells you you’re fat? Wow, that’s rough. Get to the gym, but know that your self-worth isn’t measured in pounds.</p>
<p><strong>9. Don’t dilute yourself. </strong>Pour everything into your writing. Give it your grandest voice. Say what you think in your next meeting. When you put forth your 100% self, people will still only see 20% of you because they like looking at themselves most of the time. If you only put 20% of yourself forward, they won’t look away from the mirror.</p>
<p><strong>10. Don’t delude yourself. </strong>Also know that the world doesn’t revolve around you. There are bigger problems, there are people who need more help than you do. While you are chasing dreams of publication, there are others who are going to bed hungry at night. Never lose your perspective.</p>
<p><strong>11. Volunteer. </strong>It’s a selfish thing because you feel so good after doing it, but it’s always better to be selfish in a selfless way. There are worse ways to be selfish.</p>
<p><strong>12. Get a pet. </strong>Of course, first make sure that you will love and properly take care of an animal. There is nothing more comforting than snuggling a furry friend after an awful day.</p>
<p><strong>13. Always bring both your contact lens case (filled with solution!) and your glasses.</strong> You just never know.</p>
<p><strong>14. Bad days happen.</strong> Take a shower and go to bed. It will get better. Whatever you do, don’t drink!</p>
<p><strong>15. Finish the dishes before bed. </strong>Stick to your routines, even when you’re dead tired. You’ll probably also be dead tired tomorrow, and those dishes don’t do themselves …</p>
<p><strong>16. You are responsible for your well-being. </strong>Your friends and family and coworkers can’t feel what you feel. If you need a rest, take it. If you need to get to the doctor, no one can take your body there for you. Your mind and body are connected: take care of them both, or no one else will.</p>
<p><strong>17. Not all regrets are created equal. </strong>If someone asks you to jump out of a plane without a parachute, don’t yell “YOLO” and jump. Use your judgment. Take risks and live life to its fullest, but do think twice. One mistake CAN really change everything. When in doubt, choose to regret not doing something. Don’t set yourself up to regret stupidity.</p>
<p><strong>18. Make your own lists.</strong> Someday you will want to share yours, or add to yours, or laugh at yours, or burn yours and start afresh.</p>
<p><strong>19. Never look back. </strong>Memories are beautiful and they define who we become, but forward is always the right direction. Keep your eyes and feet pointed that way.</p>
<p><strong>20. Most importantly, listen to your grandma.</strong> She’s been around the block (a few times). And she knows best.</p>
<p><em>Carina Sitkus is a former Teach for America corps member and a proud Rutgers University and Brown University alum. She is from NJ and is currently the External Affairs Associate for Blackstone Valley Prep (BVP) Mayoral Academy in Rhode Island. Follow her on <a href="https://twitter.com/carinasitkus">Twitter</a>&nbsp;or connect with her on <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/carinasitkus">LinkedIn</a>.&nbsp;</em></p>
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<p><a href="https://medium.com/@carinasitkus/942056164b28" class="m-story" data-width="200%" data-collapsed="true">The Italian Man at Barnes &amp; Noble Who Asked a Favor</a></p><p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/helpful-life-tips-from-grandma-2014-11#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/im-a-dad-who-leaned-out-of-my-career-and-i-would-do-it-again-2014-11I 'Leaned Out' Of My Career, And I Would Do It Againhttp://www.businessinsider.com/im-a-dad-who-leaned-out-of-my-career-and-i-would-do-it-again-2014-11
Thu, 13 Nov 2014 16:07:00 -0500Scott Diaz, as told to Marianne Hayes
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><img style="float:right;" src="http://static3.businessinsider.com/image/5464e41f69bedd1e048e6059-600-/dad-and-son-8.jpg" border="0" alt="Dad and son " width="600">Five years ago I was thriving as a corporate communications director at a mobile-tech start-up in Silicon Valley.</span></p>
<p>As the sole breadwinner in my family, my six-figure salary supported my wife, Janet,* and our two kids, Ben* and Sarah,* who were 11 and 9 at the time, respectively.</p>
<p>We didn't live large or spend carelessly, but we had a comfortable life. We had a nice home in the Bay Area suburbs. We could afford private school and after-school activities for the kids. And we were still able to save money.</p>
<p>But being comfortable came with a price. I worked long, demanding hours — it wasn't uncommon for me to arrive at the office before 7 A.M. and return home just in time to give my kids a kiss good night. In many ways, I felt like I was missing out on their childhoods.</p>
<p>That's why I ultimately made the decision to "lean out" of corporate life and work from home as a public relations consultant.</p>
<p>Was it easy? No way — running my own business was more work than I ever imagined. But I can honestly say that it was one of the best decisions I ever made.</p>
<h3>I was a family man who didn't have time for family.</h3>
<p>I was raised in a single-parent household. My dad was only around during our every-other-weekend visits and assorted holidays. And my mom worked as a nurse to provide for us. As a result, both of my parents usually missed out on the after-school activities that were important to me, like soccer and tennis.</p>
<p>So as I started my own family, I told myself that I would be there for my kids. But as any working parent can attest, striking work-life balance isn't always so easy — especially when your family's livelihood is on the line.</p>
<p><img src="http://static3.businessinsider.com/image/5464e3f9ecad043d37bb083f-907-680/dad-and-son-7.jpg" border="0" alt="Dad And Son "></p>
<p>I began my career in marketing and public relations in the early 1990s, working mostly for tech companies. The workdays started early but seldom required me to work late, so I didn’t expect to miss out too much when my son was born in 1997.</p>
<p>Shortly after we welcomed Ben home, I was laid off. Fortunately, it only took me about ten weeks to find another tech PR job. Unfortunately, my industry took a downturn and just a few months later, I was laid off again.&nbsp;Knowing that my family was relying on me, I just dusted myself off and moved on.</p>
<p>About two months later, I landed the best job I'd ever had, working in corporate communications for a small wireless-tech company. I truly enjoyed the projects I was working on and the people I was working with, but as the only internal PR employee, my workload was heavy. I worked 12-hour-plus days just to stay afloat.</p>
<p>Life got even busier in 1999, when my daughter, Sarah, was born. After the sting of two layoffs — and knowing I had a new addition to the family — I worked as hard as ever to prove my value to the firm.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, that meant I missed many family dinners, bath times, and bedtime stories. Sometimes if the kids napped well during the day, they could stay awake until 10 P.M. — and we occasionally got to squeeze in some quality evening time together.</p>
<p>But my schedule never let up, even when I moved around to other jobs. As the kids got older, I continued to miss out on parts of their lives, including soccer practices, baseball games, and homework time.</p>
<p>Janet and the kids never complained. They knew I had to do what I had to do to keep food on the table. But I still felt guilt because there were times when Janet was worn down, especially on days when she had to drive all over town trying to juggle both the kids' activities.</p>
<p>So while my career enabled me to provide a good life for my family, it was also the reason why I was missing out on that life.</p>
<p><img src="http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/5464e521ecad04e238bb083f-1200-924/businessmen-mentor-work-suits-11.jpg" border="0" alt="businessmen mentor work suits"></p>
<h3>My lean-out lightbulb moment</h3>
<p>By 2009 I was making a little more than $100,000, had great stock options and loved the work I was doing at the mobile-tech startup.</p>
<p>But I still lacked work-life balance. I was usually out the door before the kids were up, and often didn't get home until they were getting ready for bed — some days I didn't see them at all.&nbsp;The hours were getting to me, and I started to think about branching out on my own.</p>
<p>In truth, I had been playing with the idea of starting a PR consulting business back in 1997, after I'd gone through that second layoff. I had even started setting up a shed in my backyard as a potential home office, but I never had the time to finish it. Plus, I wasn't really ready yet — it was too big of a decision to take lightly, and the welfare of my family was at stake.</p>
<p>But the seed had been planted, and in 2009 I began reaching out to people I knew who were already consulting: lawyers, accountants, friends, business contacts. In the process, I realized how strong my professional network was in Silicon Valley, and I felt confident that they could help me generate business.</p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Then I got wind that my company was preparing for a round of layoffs.</span></p>
<p>While I was fairly certain my position was safe, I knew some of my co-workers' weren't. Having the company clean house, only to tell them a short time later that I was leaving, didn’t seem fair. I realized that stepping out then could save someone else's job.</p>
<p>I spoke to Janet about leaving the corporate world and she supported the decision. She knew I wasn't one to make a rash decision unless I was convinced I would be successful. And the more I thought about it, the more I also believed that going freelance could be a smarter financial choice in the long run.</p>
<p>Yes, I’d have to find my own business, but consulting offered the potential to make more money. Plus, I would no longer have to worry about working tirelessly for a company — just to be laid off when things went south.</p>
<p>So I took the leap and gave my notice. Thankfully, my higher-ups took the news well and only wished me the best. Even better, they agreed to hire me as a consultant — and this was in addition to another client I'd already lined up through my contacts.</p>
<p>And that's how I began my new life as a work-from-home dad.</p>
<p><img src="http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/5179479f6bb3f7ab1e000002-1024-768/working-from-home-10.jpg" border="0" alt="Working From Home"></p>
<h3>Work-life balance — and a better nest egg</h3>
<p>The transition from full-time to freelance hasn't always been a smooth one. When I first started, I realized there were things like payroll, taxes, billing and IT support that I had to quickly school myself on — or at least get help from the right people.</p>
<p>But that's been a small sacrifice for being able to take more of an active parenting role. Once I became a consultant, my time was finally my own. I could schedule my workflow around my children's schedules and, as a result, I've been able to watch them grow from young kids into young adults.</p>
<p>A typical day now starts at 6 A.M., which is also around the same time my kids start their day. While they're eating breakfast, I'm working on my laptop from the kitchen table. This may not make for prime family discussion time, but I still love being in the mix as they get ready to leave for school.</p>
<p>The rest of the day I'm in my home office and focused on work, but I step away when my kids finish with school. I'm able to pick them up, coach Sarah's lacrosse team, sit down to family dinners, and, more recently, help Ben with college research. Janet and I now tackle the kids' schedules together, and I don't think there's been a single game of Ben's or Sarah's where at least one of us hasn't been present.</p>
<p>When the kids turn in for the night, I do squeeze in some more work time. At times, that means working until midnight, but I prefer that over missing family time.</p>
<p>Financially, I've been fortunate enough to maintain enough business to match the type of income I had in my corporate life. I direct deposit a paycheck for myself from my business account every two weeks, and I've even been able to give myself small raises over the years. If I'm anticipating a major expense — like the used car I recently bought for Ben — I can always take on another client for a while, which can bump up my income by up to 25%.</p>
<p>Since going solo, I've also boosted my retirement savings. As a business owner, I was able to set up a&nbsp;<a href="http://www.learnvest.com/knowledge-center/retirement-options-for-small-business-owners-what-you-need-to-know/" target="_blank">Simplified Employee Pension Plan</a>&nbsp;(SEP) to which I contribute the full amount — about 35% to 40% more than what I was putting into my company's 401(k) back in my corporate years.</p>
<p>There are moments when I think it might be nice to go back to corporate life, but I honestly don't see that happening anytime soon — the rewards my lifestyle have afforded me are too valuable.</p>
<p>I've always viewed my most important job as being the breadwinner in the family, but I never wanted to do that at the expense of helping to raise my children. I learned firsthand that you have to take advantage of the time you have watching them learn and grow because you'll never get that back. Now I have the best of both worlds.</p>
<p><em>*Names has been changed, including the name of the author.</em></p><p><strong>SEE ALSO:&nbsp;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/fathers-earn-more-than-men-without-children-2014-10" >More Good Career News For Men Who Have Kids</a></strong></p>
<p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/im-a-dad-who-leaned-out-of-my-career-and-i-would-do-it-again-2014-11#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/what-to-give-your-grandchildren-2014-11Here's What You Can Give Your Grandchildren To Make Them Richhttp://www.businessinsider.com/what-to-give-your-grandchildren-2014-11
Tue, 11 Nov 2014 14:14:14 -0500 Louis DeNicola
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static3.businessinsider.com/image/5462237f6bb3f7185c1952e4-600-/grandparents-with-grandchildren.jpg" border="0" alt="Grandparents with grandchildren" width="600"></p><p>What kind of legacy will help your grandchildren become financially secure adults?</p>
<p>We sought input from seven financial experts, including certified financial planners, financial analysts, and public accountants.</p>
<p>Although specific recommendations varied, the bottom line was crystal clear: Invest wisely, and make sure the giving is about more than money.</p>
<h3 class="minor">The gift of education</h3>
<p><span>The first, and arguably best, preparation for future riches is&nbsp;</span><a href="http://www.cheapism.com/cheap-college-textbooks">education</a><span>. Data has long shown that college graduates earn more than high school graduates, so helping to ensure post-secondary studies is a gift that lasts a lifetime.</span></p>
<p>Creating a college savings account, a.k.a. a 529 Plan, is an easy and tax-wise way to go. Funds allocated to these accounts are earmarked for educational expenses on behalf of a child or grandchild. (If the intended recipient decides not to pursue learning, the beneficiary can be switched to another family member.)</p>
<p>These assets grow until withdrawn, are not reported on the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, confer tax benefits on account holders, and are tax-free for recipients.<span style="line-height: 1.5em;">&nbsp;</span></p>
<p>How is the money in a 529 Plan invested? That depends on the plans offered in your state and the choices you make — either to invest in select mutual or money-market funds or to prepay tuition.&nbsp;Do your homework before proceeding.</p>
<h3 class="minor">The gift of liquid assets</h3>
<p><span>Another, but by no means mutually exclusive, approach is to set up a brokerage account in your name, and maybe add the child as a shared account holder. This is an excellent way to invest for future generations. Paul Tucci, who wrote "</span><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Handy-Investing-Answer-Book/dp/1578594863/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1415717443&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=The+Handy+Investing+Answer+Book">The Handy Investing Answer Book</a>"<span>&nbsp;and "</span><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Handy-Personal-Finance-Answer-Book/dp/1578593220/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1415717465&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=The+Handy+Personal+Finance+Answer+Book">The Handy Personal Finance Answer Book</a>,"<span>&nbsp;suggests investing in a low-fee index fund that can be augmented at set intervals, such as birthdays or holidays. </span></p>
<p><span>Nancy Butler, a certified financial planner in Waterford, Connecticut, chose a slightly different path. She wanted to provide for her grandchildren's&nbsp;</span><a href="http://www.cheapism.com/blog/3184/learn-a-language-for-free">education</a><span>&nbsp;and also ensure their well-being if tragedy befell their parents. Her investment vehicle of choice: a variable universal life insurance policy, which has a flexible premium, pays a death benefit, and grows in value from investment returns (it can also shrink).</span></p>
<p>In general, experts caution against buying shares of only one stock because doing so violates the accepted wisdom about holding a diversified portfolio. An exception may arise if you buy a couple of shares in a company that the child knows about, such as Disney, and then use the holdings as a teachable moment about investments, says Tom Scanlon, a CPA and certified financial planner in Manchester, Connecticut.</p>
<p><img src="http://static6.businessinsider.com/image/546224896da811d07c1952e7-885-664/grandpa-reading-to-grandchild.jpg" border="0" alt="Grandpa reading to grandchild"></p>
<p>Experts also favor retaining control of the assets, at least for a while, even after the child turns 18. As Shane Leonard, a certified financial analyst based in London, points out, young adults may lack the discipline to use the money wisely. So if you haven't already taught a grandchild the value of money, how to earn and save it, and how to put off impulsive purchases, there's no time to waste. Ditto for understanding how financial markets work.</p>
<h3>The gift of values</h3>
<p><span>Of course,&nbsp;</span><a href="http://www.cheapism.com/blog/3195/personal-finance-resources">financial resources</a><span>&nbsp;aren't the only basis for a rich life. Experts stress the importance of modeling the right attitude about, and perspective on, money. They also suggest bringing books into the home and reading to the child; rewarding good behavior and correcting bad behavior; and never spoiling a child with anything but love. </span></p>
<p>Carol Phillips, a health coach in Bedford, New Hampshire, asserts that physical activity is part and parcel of a complete and rich life and advises that adults and children spend time together engaged in physical activities."The gift of health has, by far, the best return on investment," she declares.<span><br></span></p><p><strong>SEE ALSO:&nbsp;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/give-kids-cash-gifts-2014-11" >71% Of Parents Would Rather You Give Their Kids Cash Than Gifts</a></strong></p>
<p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/what-to-give-your-grandchildren-2014-11#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/how-the-hilton-family-got-so-rich-2014-10How The Hilton Family Built An International Hotel Brand And Got Super Richhttp://www.businessinsider.com/how-the-hilton-family-got-so-rich-2014-10
Mon, 20 Oct 2014 15:16:21 -0400Akin Oyedele
<p class="full"><img src="http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/54455bf0ecad0429067efb79-1200-924/hilton-family-2.jpg" border="0" alt="hilton family"></p><p></p>
<p class="full">It's been a good couple of years to be a Hilton.</p>
<p class="full">Last year the company, mostly now owned by private equity firm Blackstone, went public in <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/hilton-hotels-to-ipo-2013-12">a massive $2.35 billion IPO</a> — the biggest for a hotel company ever.</p>
<p class="full">Just this month, the company sold New York City's <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/hilton-to-sell-new-yorks-waldorf-astoria-hotel-to-chinese-insurer-2014-10">Waldorf Astoria</a> to a Chinese insurance company for an eye-popping $1.95 billion.</p>
<p class="full">Plus it seems Paris Hilton has really taken to her new calling as a DJ.</p>
<p class="full">It's a lot of great success and of course it didn't come out of thin air. The Hilton family brand is a dynasty generations in the making.</p>
<p class="full">This is the story of how it all started.</p><h3>Augustus Halvorsen Hilton was born in 1854 and moved to the US in 1870.</h3>
<img src="http://static3.businessinsider.com/image/54400acbeab8ea5064f582cd-400-300/augustus-halvorsen-hilton-was-born-in-1854-and-moved-to-the-us-in-1870.jpg" alt="" />
<p><p>He married Mary Genevieve, of German descent. He was born on the<span>&nbsp;Hilton family farm near Kl&oslash;fta in Ullensaker, Norway.</span></p>
<p><em>Source: <a href="http://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=GET&amp;db=royals&amp;id=I56305">RootsWeb</a></em></p></p>
<br/><br/><h3>Augustus had seven children, including Conrad, who became the scion of the Hilton empire.</h3>
<img src="http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/54400a1969bedd3b272a820e-400-300/augustus-had-seven-children-including-conrad-who-became-the-scion-of-the-hilton-empire.jpg" alt="" />
<p><p><span>Conrad was born in New Mexico in 1887 and would become one of the most famous Hiltons for his business savvy.</span></p>
<p><em>Source:&nbsp;<a href="http://www.abqjournal.com/468680/news/san-miguel-church-ready-after-four-years-of-work.html">Albuquerque Journal</a></em></p>
<p><span>&nbsp;</span></p></p>
<br/><br/><h3>Conrad learned business in his father's grocery store. After college, he got into politics in New Mexico.</h3>
<img src="http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/544150fc6bb3f76435f1b8bf-400-300/conrad-learned-business-in-his-fathers-grocery-store-after-college-he-got-into-politics-in-new-mexico.jpg" alt="" />
<p><p>He most likely learned a couple of useful things about how to run a business. At this point, the family was occasionally renting rooms in their home.</p>
<p><span>In college, he joined Tau Kappa Epsilon, an international fraternity, and got involved in politics after graduation as a republican representative in the first New Mexico legislature, when the state was newly created.&nbsp;</span></p>
<p><em style="line-height: 1.5em;">Source: <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2011/apr/23/hilton-hotel-paris-family-dynasties-ian-sansom">The Guardian</a></em></p></p>
<br/><br/><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/how-the-hilton-family-got-so-rich-2014-10#he-was-also-a-war-veteran-and-served-in-the-us-army-during-wwi-4">See the rest of the story at Business Insider</a> http://www.businessinsider.com/r-family-dinner-table-dynamics-linked-to-childhood-obesity-2014-10Family Dinner-Table Dynamics Linked To Childhood Obesityhttp://www.businessinsider.com/r-family-dinner-table-dynamics-linked-to-childhood-obesity-2014-10
Sun, 19 Oct 2014 07:09:00 -0400Kathryn Doyle
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><img src="http://static3.businessinsider.com/image/54439ba2ecad04e279673a0d-1200-706/maxresdefault-24.jpg" border="0" alt="homer simpson simpsons dinner">NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Families who express more warmth, group enjoyment and positive reinforcement at family meals have children with reduced risk of obesity, according to a new study.</span></p>
<p>“Past research has shown that having frequent family meals is protective against youth obesity, but we don’t know why this is the case,” said lead author Jerica M. Berge of the Department of Family Medicine and Community Health at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis.</p>
<p>“The current study was designed to answer the ‘why’ question,” Berge told Reuters Health by email.</p>
<p>The study involved 120 children, ages six to 12, from families in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area who reported eating dinner as a family at least three times per week.</p>
<p>Family meals were video-recorded on iPads for an eight-day period.</p>
<p>They recorded types of foods, meal length, communication and interaction between parents and children and between siblings. Researchers also used parent and child surveys and interviews.</p>
<p>Three-quarters of the children were African American and half were overweight or obese.</p>
<p>Kids who were not overweight were more likely than overweight kids to have family meals last longer and to have a father or stepfather present. Overall, dinners lasted about 16 minutes, with an average of 18 minutes for healthy weight kids and 13.5 minutes for overweight kids.</p>
<p>“This finding may mean that when children have structure and more supervision at the meal they have more protection against overweight or obesity, (meaning) maybe a less chaotic meal environment and more chances to connect,” Berge said.</p>
<p>The kitchen was the most common location for dinners; 80 percent of healthy weight kids ate dinner with their families in a kitchen, compared to 55 percent of overweight kids. More families of overweight kids tended to eat in family rooms, offices or bedrooms.</p>
<p>Families with more warmth and nurturing, as rated by researchers observing the videos, were less likely to have overweight or obese children. Hostility, inconsistent discipline and permissive parental attitudes were associated with increased likelihood of childhood obesity.</p>
<p>“This may mean that in households where children are not overweight or obese there are more positive interactions at the family meal, which provides a sense of security, regularity and predictability which may help children regulate their own daily lives better, including self-regulating their eating behaviors,” Berge said.</p>
<p>Families who communicated more about food were less likely to have overweight or obese children, according to the results published in Pediatrics.</p>
<p>These findings only identify associations between meal habits and childhood obesity, and do not prove that mealtime dynamics cause obesity, Berge said, but there are some known healthy strategies parents can employ at the dinner table.</p>
<p>“It is important for families to try and promote a positive atmosphere during family meals,” she said. “For example, don’t use the family meal as a time to lecture children about their homework. Instead, take time to connect with each other such as asking each family member to talk about a ‘high’ or ‘low’ from their day to promote connectivity among family members.”</p>
<p>Another childhood feeding and obesity study, published in the same issue of Pediatrics, found that among same-gender twin pairs, mothers tend to be more restrictive when feeding the child with the higher body mass index (BMI), a measure of weight to height.</p>
<p>Researchers studied 64 pairs of twins ages four to seven, measuring their BMI, body fat percentage and waist circumference. Mothers reported their feeding styles toward each twin in a questionnaire, which assessed restricting food items, pressuring a child to eat and monitoring the child’s eating.</p>
<p>Observing twins helps to partially rule out the possibility that heavier children are genetically predisposed to have poorer eating self-regulation, or that they were shaped by their environment, since twins have the same genes and environment, said senior author Myles S. Faith from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.</p>
<p>His results suggest that restrictive feeding may influence weight gain.</p>
<p>“First, foods that are withheld might become more desired or sought after – sort of like ‘forbidden fruit’,” Faith said in an email. “When children eventually do get access, they might chose these less healthy foods and overeat because they have that chance.”</p>
<p>“Second, restrictive feeding might disrupt children’s ‘satiety responsiveness’ – which is the ability to recognize when we’re full,” he said. “So, restrictive feeding may impede children learning this skill.”</p>
<p>Both new studies indicate that parental choices may help determine a child’s relationship with food and childhood weight gain.</p>
<p>SOURCES: http://bit.ly/1szwpwo and http://bit.ly/1vYLurC Pediatrics, online October 13, 2014.</p><p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/r-family-dinner-table-dynamics-linked-to-childhood-obesity-2014-10#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/my-grandmother-taught-me-that-money-signifies-love-2014-9My Grandmother Loved My Brother More Than Me, And She Showed It With Moneyhttp://www.businessinsider.com/my-grandmother-taught-me-that-money-signifies-love-2014-9
Sat, 13 Sep 2014 10:28:00 -0400Joey Slamon
<p><img src="http://static3.businessinsider.com/image/540dba2369beddad42255d1b-1024-512/grandmother-1.jpg" border="0" alt="grandmother"></p><p>I’d like to say I don’t care about money. I’d love to be one of those cool, free-spirited hippies who lives with only what they can carry in their knapsacks or squeeze onto their rickshaws.</p>
<p>But the truth is, I love money.</p>
<p>Not because I love spending it, quite the opposite. I’m actually quite a hoarder with my money. No, I love money because of the emotional attachments I’ve developed for it. To me, money is a way of showing how much you care about someone. How much you spend on their birthday or Christmas present is a direct correlation with how much you care for them.</p>
<p>And it’s my grandmother’s fault.</p>
<p>I was born in 1982 and for four short, wonderful years, I was my grandmother’s favorite. My grandma (or Sito, as we called her) had three children but only one son, my father. And in the Syrian culture, men reign supreme. Maybe not even the Syrian culture anymore, but definitely the old-school mentality my Sito had. Women were to serve men and men were to provide.</p>
<p>And since my father was a doctor, well, you could burn your retinas on the pride she beamed.</p>
<p>So to be the only child of her only son, well, I was set. It was a given that I’d be her favorite grandchild and life was good ... until my brother was born. Everyone loves my brother more than me, to this day. But from the second he was born, it was clear that with my Sito, I was old news. Her son had a son and she couldn’t have loved him more.</p>
<p>It’s hard when you’re a child of around six to realize someone doesn’t love you as much as they love someone else. Especially when that "someone" is your own grandmother. And that "someone else" was this annoying, attention grabbing thing that kind of looked like me. But I wasn’t worried. Surely she’d have to see I was the superior grandchild and more deserving of her love and praise than my stupid brother who couldn’t even stand up on his own. But my efforts went unnoticed.</p>
<p>There is photographic proof of my grandmother’s love of my brother over me.</p>
<p>In every photo of the three of us, she’s practically pushing me out of frame so she can make room for her more loved grandson. This happened for years. One morning while visiting her in Pennsylvania, with my family she made a huge breakfast and there were three dishes on the dining room table. After coming back from a run with my father, I was starving and sat down at one of the place settings.</p>
<p>You know what my Sito said? "Oh, are you hungry? There’s cereal in the pantry." She had made breakfast for my father, my brother and herself, so she could be surrounded by the ones she truly loved. I stood in the kitchen with my mother while we quietly ate old Wheetabix and my mother promised me a trip to Dunkin’ Donuts later to make up for it.</p>
<p><img src="http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/540dbb8fecad04476fdbc957-806-403/christmas-tree-8.jpg" border="0" alt="christmas tree"></p>
<p>But it didn’t matter.</p>
<p>I knew that deep down she loved me as much as she loved my brother. I knew this for a fact because every Christmas, we’d each get a crisp $50 bill from my Sito. My other grandmother wrote checks, but my Sito sent cash. As a child with no allowance, seeing that much money at once was mind blowing. To this day I get a special feeling when seeing a $50.</p>
<p>My Sito could pretend that she loved my brother more than me once a year when we made the trip to see her, she could dote over him and all but ignore me at her house in front of our family members, but here was cold hard proof that at the end of the day, my brother and I were the same. Each deserving of the same $50 bill.</p>
<p>When she passed away years later, we were looking through some of her old belongings, and that’s when I saw it: The ledger. My Sito ran a cigarette and candy shop (which was a thing in the 70s) and was always a meticulous accountant. I never saw her pay for anything without writing down the exact amount to be officially recorded later. And going through her old money ledger, my heart welled with pride.</p>
<p>This woman, who did so much for everyone around her, managed to stay independent even after the loss of her husband due to her meticulous finances. Good for her! To hell with men! We can be just as smart and capable with money! I vowed then and there to be as diligent with my own finances as an ode to my Sito, to run my own life and never let anyone tell me I was "less than."</p>
<p>And then I saw it: December 15th, 1997 — the entries for Christmas presents for her grandchildren. My brother’s name — Matthew — and next to it, $50. And then my name:</p>
<p>Joey: $25.</p>
<p>I was shocked and immediately went to my mother, hoping she would explain it away as a mistake. That my Sito obviously loved us both the same and there was no way she would give my brother double what she had given me. That I hadn’t been living a lie for the past 17 years and that the secret confirmation I had that my grandma loved me just as much as my brother was simply recorded wrong in the ledger.</p>
<p>My mother sighed and said "That's why you got cash. She always sent checks, but, I had to make up the difference. You two always got the same from me!" my mother added in an attempt to save my dignity.</p>
<p>It did not work. I was crushed. But maybe this is why the gender wage gap doesn't bother me. At least it's not 50%, like my grandmother's.</p><p><strong>SEE ALSO:&nbsp;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/sold-my-integrity-in-a-single-phone-call-2014-9" >I Sold My Integrity In A Single Phone Call From My Boss</a></strong></p>
<p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/my-grandmother-taught-me-that-money-signifies-love-2014-9#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/my-grandmother-taught-me-that-money-signifies-love-2014-9My Grandmother Taught Me That Money Signifies Lovehttp://www.businessinsider.com/my-grandmother-taught-me-that-money-signifies-love-2014-9
Mon, 08 Sep 2014 11:13:29 -0400Joey Slamon
<p><img src="http://static3.businessinsider.com/image/540dba2369beddad42255d1b-1024-512/grandmother-1.jpg" border="0" alt="grandmother"></p><p>I’d like to say I don’t care about money. I’d love to be one of those cool, free-spirited hippies who lives with only what they can carry in their knapsacks or squeeze onto their rickshaws.</p>
<p>But the truth is, I love money.</p>
<p>Not because I love spending it, quite the opposite. I’m actually quite a hoarder with my money. No, I love money because of the emotional attachments I’ve developed for it. To me, money is a way of showing how much you care about someone. How much you spend on their birthday or Christmas present is a direct correlation with how much you care for them.</p>
<p>And it’s my grandmother’s fault.</p>
<p>I was born in 1982 and for four short, wonderful years, I was my grandmother’s favorite. My grandma (or Sito, as we called her) had three children but only one son, my father. And in the Syrian culture, men reign supreme. Maybe not even the Syrian culture anymore, but definitely the old-school mentality my Sito had. Women were to serve men and men were to provide.</p>
<p>And since my father was a doctor, well, you could burn your retinas on the pride she beamed.</p>
<p>So to be the only child of her only son, well, I was set. It was a given that I’d be her favorite grandchild and life was good ... until my brother was born. Everyone loves my brother more than me, to this day. But from the second he was born, it was clear that with my Sito, I was old news. Her son had a son and she couldn’t have loved him more.</p>
<p>It’s hard when you’re a child of around six to realize someone doesn’t love you as much as they love someone else. Especially when that "someone" is your own grandmother. And that "someone else" was this annoying, attention grabbing thing that kind of looked like me. But I wasn’t worried. Surely she’d have to see I was the superior grandchild and more deserving of her love and praise than my stupid brother who couldn’t even stand up on his own. But my efforts went unnoticed.</p>
<p>There is photographic proof of my grandmother’s love of my brother over me.</p>
<p>In every photo of the three of us, she’s practically pushing me out of frame so she can make room for her more loved grandson. This happened for years. One morning while visiting her in Pennsylvania, with my family she made a huge breakfast and there were three dishes on the dining room table. After coming back from a run with my father, I was starving and sat down at one of the place settings.</p>
<p>You know what my Sito said? "Oh, are you hungry? There’s cereal in the pantry." She had made breakfast for my father, my brother and herself, so she could be surrounded by the ones she truly loved. I stood in the kitchen with my mother while we quietly ate old Wheetabix and my mother promised me a trip to Dunkin’ Donuts later to make up for it.</p>
<p><img src="http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/540dbb8fecad04476fdbc957-806-403/christmas-tree-8.jpg" border="0" alt="christmas tree"></p>
<p>But it didn’t matter.</p>
<p>I knew that deep down she loved me as much as she loved my brother. I knew this for a fact because every Christmas, we’d each get a crisp $50 bill from my Sito. My other grandmother wrote checks, but my Sito sent cash. As a child with no allowance, seeing that much money at once was mind blowing. To this day I get a special feeling when seeing a $50.</p>
<p>My Sito could pretend that she loved my brother more than me once a year when we made the trip to see her, she could dote over him and all but ignore me at her house in front of our family members, but here was cold hard proof that at the end of the day, my brother and I were the same. Each deserving of the same $50 bill.</p>
<p>When she passed away years later, we were looking through some of her old belongings, and that’s when I saw it: The ledger. My Sito ran a cigarette and candy shop (which was a thing in the 70s) and was always a meticulous accountant. I never saw her pay for anything without writing down the exact amount to be officially recorded later. And going through her old money ledger, my heart welled with pride.</p>
<p>This woman, who did so much for everyone around her, managed to stay independent even after the loss of her husband due to her meticulous finances. Good for her! To hell with men! We can be just as smart and capable with money! I vowed then and there to be as diligent with my own finances as an ode to my Sito, to run my own life and never let anyone tell me I was "less than."</p>
<p>And then I saw it: December 15th, 1997 — the entries for Christmas presents for her grandchildren. My brother’s name — Matthew — and next to it, $50. And then my name:</p>
<p>Joey: $25.</p>
<p>I was shocked and immediately went to my mother, hoping she would explain it away as a mistake. That my Sito obviously loved us both the same and there was no way she would give my brother double what she had given me. That I hadn’t been living a lie for the past 17 years and that the secret confirmation I had that my grandma loved me just as much as my brother was simply recorded wrong in the ledger.</p>
<p>My mother sighed and said "That's why you got cash. She always sent checks, but, I had to make up the difference. You two always got the same from me!" my mother added in an attempt to save my dignity.</p>
<p>It did not work. I was crushed. But maybe this is why the gender wage gap doesn't bother me. At least it's not 50%, like my grandmother's.</p><p><strong>SEE ALSO:&nbsp;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/sold-my-integrity-in-a-single-phone-call-2014-9" >I Sold My Integrity In A Single Phone Call From My Boss</a></strong></p>
<p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/my-grandmother-taught-me-that-money-signifies-love-2014-9#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/myth-of-normal-american-family-2014-9There's No Such Thing As A 'Normal' American Familyhttp://www.businessinsider.com/myth-of-normal-american-family-2014-9
Thu, 04 Sep 2014 18:29:00 -0400Stephanie Pappas
<p><img class="full" src="http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/5408e659ecad0463449d303a-951-713/modern-family-gloria-jay-sofia-vergara-6.png" border="0" alt="Modern family gloria jay sofia vergara"></p><p>The change in family structure over the past 50 years is not a simple march from a "Leave It to Beaver"-style two-parent household to Murphy Brown-esque single working moms. In reality, new research finds, the name of the game is now diversity.</p>
<p>There is no single "normal" in <a href="http://www.livescience.com/37674-supreme-court-decisions-changed-families.html">the modern American family</a>, according to a new report prepared for the Council on Contemporary Families. Most commonly, children (34 percent) live with married, dual-career parents. However, no single family style is in the majority.</p>
<p>"We have not replaced one ideal family type with another," said Philip Cohen, a sociologist at the University of Maryland. "We have replaced one ideal family type with what we call a 'peacock's tail' in the report, because it fans out." [<a href="http://www.livescience.com/27987-marriage-myths.html">I Don't: 5 Myths About Marriage</a>]</p>
<h2>Changing families</h2>
<p>Cohen used data from the U.S. Census and from national surveys on family life to reconstruct the family arrangements of Americans in 1960 and 2012.</p>
<p>In 1960, the American family showed a "peak conformity," Cohen told Live Science. That year, the age at first marriage was the youngest, the marriage rate was at its highest, and the number of <a href="http://www.livescience.com/16350-increase-multigenerational-households.html">extended families living together in multigenerational households</a> was the lowest.</p>
<p>That year, 65 percent of children under age 15 lived in a family with married parents in which the father was the breadwinner — the "Leave It to Beaver" ideal. Another 18 percent had married parents who were both employed. Only one child in 350 lived with a mother who had never been married. The vast majority of the <a href="http://www.livescience.com/29521-5-ways-motherhood-has-changed.html">single mothers</a>&nbsp;were divorced, widowed or separated, and about 7 percent of children were growing up in those households.</p>
<p>In 2012, no family type held a majority. The number of children with married parents and only a father working dropped to 22 percent, while children raised by dual-income married parents rose to 34 percent. Eleven percent of kids lived with a never-married mother and 7 percent with a parent cohabiting with a romantic partner. About 3 percent of children lived with a single father.</p>
<p>In 1960, two children chosen at random had an 80 percent chance to be growing up in the same sort of family structure as each other. In 2012, that chance was only 50 percent, Cohen found.</p>
<h2>Parenting and policy</h2>
<p>One consequence of all this diversity is the cultural confusion and conflict visible on any mommy blog or parenting website.</p>
<p>"People are really sort of on their own figuring out how to make their family life work, and that's one reason why you have the huge <a href="http://www.livescience.com/17894-10-scientific-parenting-tips.html">advice and parenting</a>&nbsp;industry," Cohen said. The search for role models may also help to explain the intense interest in celebrity families and marriages, like the recent Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie wedding.</p>
<p>"People get reassurance from conformity," Cohen said. "Not that everybody wants to conform with everyone else, but they like a model."</p>
<p>The implications go beyond friction at playgroup, however. Many social welfare programs are set up with married families in mind, Cohen said, but people's real lives are far more diverse. For example, he said, Social Security benefits based on a spouse's earnings may leave never-married or early-divorced people at a disadvantage in retirement.</p>
<p>"Flexibility has got to be our approach," Cohen said.</p>
<p><em>Follow Stephanie Pappas on <a href="https://twitter.com/sipappas">Twitter</a> and <a href="https://plus.google.com/101831066787121148004/posts">Google+</a>. Follow us <a href="https://twitter.com/LiveScience">@livescience</a>, <a href="http://www.facebook.com/#!/livescience">Facebook</a>&nbsp;&amp; <a href="https://plus.google.com/101164570444913213957/posts">Google+</a>. Original article on <a href="http://www.livescience.com/47681-normal-american-family-a-myth.html">Live Science</a>.</em></p>
<ul>
<li><em><a href="http://www.livescience.com/14104-happy-marriage-tips.html">6 Scientific Tips for a Successful Marriage</a></em></li>
<li><em><a href="http://www.livescience.com/37674-supreme-court-decisions-changed-families.html">8 Supreme Court Decisions that Changed US Families</a></em></li>
<li><em><a href="http://www.livescience.com/14144-parenting-tips-compassion-esteem.html">5 Ways to Foster Self-Compassion in Your Child</a></em></li>
</ul>
<p><em>Copyright 2014 <a href="http://www.livescience.com/">LiveScience</a>, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.</em></p><p><strong>SEE ALSO:&nbsp;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/12-graphs-that-show-why-people-get-fat-2014-9" >12 Graphs That Show Why People Get Fat</a></strong></p>
<p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/myth-of-normal-american-family-2014-9#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/mixing-family-and-business-can-actually-work-2014-8Q&A With This Wine CEO Shows How Business And Family Can Mix Extraordinarily Well http://www.businessinsider.com/mixing-family-and-business-can-actually-work-2014-8
Tue, 02 Sep 2014 14:30:00 -0400Jacquelyn Smith
<p><img src="http://static5.businessinsider.com/image/53fe4a7fecad046d0fccb61a-1200-/the-mariani-family-1.jpg" border="0" alt="The Mariani Family" width="1200"></p><p>There's an old saying: "Business and family don't mix well."</p>
<p>The combination can be disastrous — yet so many people attempt to do it, thinking it'll work. And most often it doesn't.</p>
<p>But occasionally it <em>does</em>. And in some cases, it works extraordinarily well.&nbsp;</p>
<p>Take the Mariani family.</p>
<p>In 1919, John Mariani, Sr. — a Connecticut native of Italian heritage — founded <a href="http://www.banfi.com/" target="_blank">Banfi Vintners</a>. Over 40 years later in 1963, John, Sr. named his sons John, Jr. and Harry as his successors. The brothers would eventually turn the company over to their children, Cristina Mariani-May and James Mariani, who today run Banfi, one of the world's leading wine merchants, as co-CEOs.</p>
<p><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">The two&nbsp;</span><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">represent the third generation of family leadership in the company. And, despite that — or, "perhaps because of it," says Mariani-May — their wine business has been enormously successful.</span></p>
<p><img class="float_left" src="http://static5.businessinsider.com/image/5405f65f69bedda767d7988c-1200-924/banfi-vintners-co-ceos-cristina-mariani-may-and-james-mariani-1.jpg" border="0" alt="Banfi Vintners co-CEOs Cristina Mariani-May and James Mariani." width="480"></p>
<p>The company has ranked as North America's leading wine importer for more than three decades.</p>
<p>So, how have the Mariani's managed to make it work?</p>
<p>We spoke with Cristina Mariani-May, a mother of two and Banfi's co-CEO who divides her time between Montalcino, Italy and Long Island, New York.</p>
<p><strong>Business Insider: Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your background?</strong><strong style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">&nbsp;</strong></p>
<p><strong>Cristina Mariani-May:</strong> Growing up in the family business, I traveled all over the world with my parents, who were restless nomads. I learned about food, wine, culture, art, and relating to different people.</p>
<p><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">When I was at Georgetown University, I studied art history and decided to study in Italy. Although I'd worked on Capitol Hill during college, it was during my junior year abroad that I realized I wanted to join the family wine business.</span></p>
<p>Upon graduating, I started working at Banfi in Events and Marketing and covered the U.S., learning our operations and organizing wine promotions. I loved interacting with the Banfi team and gained an appreciation for the market and for our customers. In this role, I really learned how to grow brands that truly connect with our consumers. I later went back to Columbia for my MBA. I think the MBA helped give me confidence and solidify my education.</p>
<p>Today, as co-CEO, I apply a combination of my education and my experience in the family business. I'm looking forward to continuing to promote and be the face of Banfi.</p>
<p><strong>BI: Tell us about your co-CEO, James Mariani.</strong></p>
<p><strong>CMM:</strong> James, my co-CEO, is my first cousin. I am very fortunate in that James has an extremely strong skillset in strategic planning and analytics. He has been working at Banfi for many years and together, we have a lot of experience in the industry, success, and ideas to improve for the future. He is very dedicated, passionate, and trustworthy. These are values that a family business needs, and I'm lucky to have a partner that shares these same family values.<span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">&nbsp;</span></p>
<p><strong>BI: Do you think Banfi has had so much success in part because it's a family-run and family-owned business?</strong></p>
<p><strong>CMM: </strong>Absolutely! The wine business takes patience, passion, and a long-term commitment. I think families are best able to bring forth these values. Also, the wine business is one that thrives on stories — behind every bottle is a story of place and family. As a family-owned business, we are positioned to tell the colorful stories that help bring our wines to life.</p>
<p><strong><img style="float:right;" src="http://static3.businessinsider.com/image/5405f692eab8ea447cf36176-807-604/the-mariani-family-5.jpg" border="0" alt="The Mariani Family." width="480">BI: Do you see how mixing business and family often doesn't work out?</strong></p>
<p><strong>CMM: </strong>Yes, of course. Business is a delicate dance, as are families. Figuring out how to make it work takes dedication, but the rewards are tremendous if it all comes together. &nbsp;</p>
<p><strong>BI: Why do you think the family-business combination has worked so well, for so long, for Banfi?</strong><strong style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">&nbsp;</strong></p>
<p><strong>CMM: </strong>Listening to and respecting one another and what we bring to the table. We all contribute different strengths, but we have a shared goal. At Banfi we are all dedicated to success and to making the best wines. Having a team and business that is passionate about their work and shares these goals has to start at the top. <strong><br></strong></p>
<p><strong>BI: Do you plan to keep Banfi in the family?</strong></p>
<p><strong>CMM: </strong>Certainly, that is the goal of many family businesses, to pass it on to the next generation. We want to leave them a company that is more successful than the one we inherited.</p>
<p><strong>BI: What's the hardest part about running a business with family members?</strong></p>
<p><strong>CMM: </strong>Never escaping business discussions, even during downtime with family members. The business always seems to percolate in our conversations, so we have to be careful to keep it in balance.</p>
<p><strong>BI: And what's the best part of running a business with family members?</strong></p>
<p><strong>CMM: </strong>I feel blessed to share my life's passion of family and wine all together. It's a strong bond to experience your family members not just as father, mother, or cousin, but also as business partners.<span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">&nbsp;</span></p>
<p>And also, to work with my father as a partner is a tremendous privilege. Sharing a glass of wine with him while overlooking our beautiful vineyards is one of my life's greatest moments.&nbsp;</p><p><strong>SEE ALSO:&nbsp;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/high-paying-low-stress-jobs-2014-7" >17 High-Paying Jobs For People Who Don't Like Stress</a></strong></p>
<p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/mixing-family-and-business-can-actually-work-2014-8#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/drybar-founders-attribute-success-to-this-motto-2014-8The Founders Of Chic Salon Chain Drybar Attribute Their Success To This Mottohttp://www.businessinsider.com/drybar-founders-attribute-success-to-this-motto-2014-8
Mon, 01 Sep 2014 14:00:00 -0400Jacquelyn Smith
<p><img src="http://static3.businessinsider.com/image/53fe3ac9ecad043250ccb61a-1200-/allie-webb-and-michael-landau-2.jpg" border="0" alt="Allie Webb and Michael Landau" width="1200"></p><p>Sibling entrepreneurs Alli Webb and Michael Landau say they owe much of their small business' enormous success to the three-word motto they've embraced since day one: "We are family."</p>
<p>In 2009, the brother-sister duo cofounded <a href="http://www.thedrybar.com/" target="_blank">Drybar</a>, a chic chain of hair salons that offers blowouts ("no cuts, no color, just blowouts") for $40 a pop. &nbsp;</p>
<p>Since its inception, they've opened 37 locations and hired over 2,200 employees — including Webb's husband, Cameron, who serves as the company's creative director, and Landau's wife, Sarah, Drybar's Spirit Director, recruiter, and "mother figure."</p>
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/53fe393becad047a40b9b602-1200-924/drybar-flatiron.jpg" border="0" alt="Drybar, flatiron" width="480">But Webb, Landau, and their spouses aren't the <em>only </em>family members in the business.</p>
<p>They consider each and every one of their 2,200 staffers family — and they strongly believe this mentality has helped them achieve so much of their success.</p>
<p>Webb and Landau say infusing the "we are family" motto into everything they do, and including it as an official <a href="http://www.thedrybar.com/values" target="_blank">company core value</a> ("We are family. Drybar was started by family. You are part of our family."), has allowed the company to stand out from conventional salons where stylists clock in and clock out and "don't feel like they're part of something bigger."<span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">&nbsp;</span></p>
<p>"In most salons, stylists rent a chair, come in, do their work, and go home," Landau tells Business Insider. "At Drybar, we do things differently. And because we've created a 'family environment,' and everyone is reminded over and over again that 'we are <em>all </em>family,' our employees are excited to come in to work. They are passionate about the brand, the products, and what they're doing. And this helps them create a wonderful experience for our clients — which makes them want to come back again and again."</p>
<p><img src="http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/53fe3a18ecad04fd49ccb61a-1200-924/drybar-2.jpg" border="0" alt="Drybar" width="1200"></p>
<p>Webb and Landau say they recognized the importance and power of the "family environment" — and the "we are family" motto — early on.</p>
<p>When they first started hiring in 2009 they placed job ads on Craigslist and conducted interviews in Webb's Los Angeles home.</p>
<p>"During interviews, I would have stylists 'audition' in my living room," Webb explains. "They would blow out my hair, and I would see how they did and whether they could hold a conversation."</p>
<p>But she quickly learned that the <em>best</em> stylists weren't the ones with the strongest technical skills. They were the ones who wanted to be part of the Drybar family; those who truly embrace that core value.</p>
<p>"Now we always<span>&nbsp;make it clear in the interview process that <span>working at Drybar is like joining a family.&nbsp;</span>If the person isn't interested in being part of an environment like that, we know it won't work out," she says. </span><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">"Many stylists don't come from that type of environment, so some try it, thinking they'll like it, and later decide they don't. Those stylists ultimately don't work out for us."</span></p>
<p><img class="float_left" src="http://static6.businessinsider.com/image/53fe1ba0eab8ead472a8e800-1200-924/alli-webb-1.jpg" border="0" alt="alli webb" width="480" style="color: #000000; font-size: 15px;">To figure out whether an individual would be a good fit for Drybar, Webb says the company's hiring managers typically ask questions that have nothing to do with skillsets. "Instead, we try to learn about who they are and what they value most. That helps us determine whether they'd thrive in a family-like environment."</p>
<p>And when the employees thrive, everyone wins.&nbsp;</p>
<p>"The 'we are family' motto really works for us, our&nbsp;employees, and our customers," Landau says. <span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">But as Drybar continues to grow, maintaining the "feel of a small, family company" may prove challenging. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">"As we get more corporate, we don't want to feel more corporate," he says. "We always want to have that family atmosphere and vibe we all enjoy today."</span></p>
<p>Watch Drybar's video on their 10 core values and beliefs here: <iframe width="800" height="500" src="//player.vimeo.com/video/48486424"></iframe></p><p><strong>SEE ALSO:&nbsp;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/business-lessons-from-boxing-2014-8" >Here’s What Boxing Taught This Small-Business Owner About Entrepreneurship</a></strong></p>
<p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/drybar-founders-attribute-success-to-this-motto-2014-8#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/michelle-lyons-describes-what-its-like-witnessing-an-execution-2014-8What It’s Like To Witness An Executionhttp://www.businessinsider.com/michelle-lyons-describes-what-its-like-witnessing-an-execution-2014-8
Thu, 28 Aug 2014 13:30:00 -0400Corey Adwar
<p><img src="http://static6.businessinsider.com/image/53ff5cfd69bedd702f6b082d-800-/2226925996_270a6d0fe8_b.jpg" border="0" alt="Texas state penitentiary, Walls Unit" width="800"></p><p>As a reporter and then spokeswoman for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ), Michelle Lyons witnessed 278 executions by lethal injection between 1998 and 2012, taking notes about last words and times of death and gathering information for press releases.&nbsp;</p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">She paid attention to the varied reactions of fellow witnesses, from family members to prison staff, and&nbsp;<span>recently shared her story with&nbsp;</span><a href="http://www.texasmonthly.com/story/michelle-lyons-witness-to-278-executions-in-texas?fullpage=1">Texas Monthly</a>.</span></p>
<h3>Reporters</h3>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Lyons saw her first executions as a reporter for a local daily newspaper. S</span><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">he noticed female journalists were the most likely to show sympathy for convicted murderers, like one newspaper reporter who put her palm to the witness room glass to gesture goodbye to an inmate she had interviewed. Lyons recalled one journalist who nearly hyperventilated and another who visibly trembled.</span></p>
<p>“Here’s the deal: If you’re going to do this job, you better be at least a little tough,” Lyons wrote in a journal.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.14news.com/story/3033067/never-again-says-one-witness-of-lethal-injection-execution">Former WFIE News Director Len Wells</a> had this to say after he was chosen through a lottery to witness the lethal injection of serial killer John Wayne Gacy in Illinois in 1994. "[I]t was extremely eerie, because the second you sat down, they turned out all the lights. I was very nervous, very anxious, it was awful to go through."</p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">"I wouldn't willingly do it again," Wells added.&nbsp;</span></p>
<h3>Relatives of the Inmate</h3>
<p><span>TDCJ carefully separated witnesses who were inmates' family members from witnesses related to the victim by placing them in adjacent rooms. Lyons documented this emotional reaction of the sister of John Albert Burks, who had shot and killed a factory owner during a robbery:</span></p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><span>As he was gasping his last breath, [his sister] went pretty hysterical, screaming and moaning and sobbing uncontrollably. She was flailing around and it caused her to thump her head up against the glass and the wall. She started screaming, ‘John! John!,’ like she was imploring him to wake up. I tried to imagine what it would be like to watch my brother be executed and for some reason, I understood why of all those witnessing she would be the one who was most hysterical.</span></p>
<p><span>Pastor Lawrence Hummer witnessed the lethal injection of Dennis McGuire, the first U.S. inmate executed using a new combination of midazolam and hydromorphone drugs in January, after anti-death penalty manufacturers refused to supply the state with alternatives, <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2014/01/15/opinion/semel-lethal-injection/">according to CNN</a>.</span></p>
<p>Hummer, who opposes the death penalty, claimed the execution took 26 minutes, longer than the executions Lyons witnessed in which inmates appeared to fall asleep quickly and painlessly.</p>
<p>"His family had been exposed to something horrendous," Hummer <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jan/22/ohio-mcguire-execution-untested-lethal-injection-inhumane">wrote in The Guardian</a>. "They cried and sobbed, held each other, held onto my hand, and at times turned away to hug each other so they didn't have to watch."</p>
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/53ff3438ecad04623750b797-1200-858/rtr3hrgi.jpg" border="0" alt="lethal injection texas" width="480"></p>
<h3>Relatives of the Victim</h3>
<p><span>Lyons also witnessed the emotional pain for victims' families, like the relatives of schoolteacher Lori Barrett, who was kidnapped and murdered by James Edward Clayton.&nbsp;</span></p>
<p><span>She chronicled the reactions of Barrett's family, unsatisfied with the execution 13 years after the murder:</span></p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><span>Following the execution, Lori Barrett’s brother, David Barrett, who was a witness, spoke at a short press conference. He said that he did not forgive Clayton for what he did, and that he agreed with the death penalty. . . . "As far as I’m concerned, it’s not painful enough," he said. When asked how he remembered his sister, he began to cry and walked away. Lori’s stepfather, Joe Insall, who witnessed, stepped forward and said, "I think he lived too long and died too easy."</span></p>
<p><span>Such a reaction among victims' families was common. “One of the hardest things for me to see was how often the victim’s family was let down by the experience, by how quick and easy it was,” Lyons said. “They didn’t walk away feeling like they had in any way been made whole.”</span></p>
<p>Billy Smith felt that way after seeing his father's killer, Willie Lloyd Turner,&nbsp;executed by lethal injection in Virginia in 1995.&nbsp;"I was relieved that it was over," Smith <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/09/AR2009110903493_2.html?sid=ST2009110903795">told The Washington Post</a>. "I was happy that justice was done, finally ... I would not have felt the same if I had not witnessed it. But watching it the way I saw it, I don't think made [the loss of my father] any easier. Sometimes I think I have more anger because it was so easy for [Turner]."&nbsp;</p>
<h3>Staff</h3>
<p><span>Larry Fitzgerald, TDCJ's public information director who recruited Lyons as a spokesperson,</span>&nbsp;divulged his confusion about whether the death penalty was right or wrong in private conversations with prison chaplain Jim Brazzil, according to Texas Monthly.&nbsp;</p>
<p>“I knew from speaking privately with Larry that he was struggling,” Brazzil told Texas Monthly. “... I’d let him talk, and we’d laugh, and we’d cry, and we’d process it together.”</p>
<p>Although Fitzgerald still dreams about certain executions, like one inmate who "fought like crazy" with six guards when his time came, those aren't the ones that trouble him most. "What bothers me is that I can't remember them all," he told Texas Monthly, having witnessed 219 in total. "There are names I have forgotten."</p><p><strong>SEE ALSO:&nbsp;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/demand-for-execution-drugs-turns-state-workers-into-drug-mules-2014-8" >There's A Shady, All-Cash Economy For Lethal Injection Drugs </a></strong></p>
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